My Cancer Treatment

I have often been asked... 'what did you take to survive your cancer?'

It seems that the longer I had survived the disease, the number of people asking me this question correspondingly keeps increasing. I suppose this should be expected. Just after my second surgery, I had begun to make many new cancer survivor friends and I had an increasing respect for their long term cancer remedies that they went through. In nearly all of their stories, one common ingredient stood out in all of them - they had determination made of steel.

This, of course, translates into their qualities in discipline, strength and a will to change their lifestyle that is absolutely vital for their very survival. They struck me as highly positive people -happy, enthusiastic, passionate and at the same time, unassuming, humble, loving and kind in their outward disposition and behaviour.

I have written broadly my belief in getting the 3 human ingredients of mind, body and spirit in good, healthy condition at all times. And I had condensed a list of 15 remedies since 2004 - all of which are non-drug, natural based 'regime' and I hope to share these with you - one at a time in this blog. And here, I will begin with the easiest of the 3 ingredients - remedies for my body [physical].

So what did I take to 'cure' my physical illness?

I have, so far nine out of 15 of remedies under the category of 'physical'. And the currently most consistent remedy is my wearing a herbal sanitary pad. This is a pad laced with incredible herbs with an almost instantaneous effect on my colon cancer condition. It 'cools' the rectal region and have so far kept the affected organ in a healthy condition. Prior to my surgery December 2003, I had a bleeding and swollen anus with chronic constipation problems. Now, with the tumour snipped and a strictly controlled diet, amongst my 14 other remedies, these sanitary pads are common feature in my daily wardrobe.

My following remedy, the keladi tikus, will be up next.

Nazlan.

Conviction.. Yakin!

There's nothing like being sure of yourself. It makes you feel good. Try it. Easier said than done? But do be careful, lest one gets caught off-guard for being labeled as arrogant. No, it's really about being confident.

You see, when one is inflicted with a life-threatening disease like cancer, being sure and confident of oneself is so important. In my experience, it may even help save your life!

When I was first told I had cancer, as many people would in that situation, I refused to believe it. You then go through a whole host of 'mood' or 'character' phases... disbelieve - denial - anger - sad - depression - acceptance, etc. Then, you're surrounded with so many 'experts'. Well, first, there's the doctors. And herein lies your dilemma. These guys... what they say is gospel, man - no question. Or so I thought...

Then, there's people whom you love - your family, your wife, your children, your siblings. And your friends. I was fortunate also to have 'surrounding' me cancer survivors. Their opinions have to be taken seriously... I mean, they're survivors, right? What they did, what they went through ... I'd taken my hat off to these chaps. There was this guy, Raphael, who had brain tumour 13 years ago. He was given no chance by his doctors to live.. but this guy now plays squash at the age of 65 and beats guys half his age! He must have done something right to prove his doctors wrong.

So you can see that having a mind that can absorb all the advice thrown at you - by people who are 'experts' at what you are going through and how to go about it - and to be able to say to yourself '..right, I've heard from all of you.. now leave me alone, let me think about this.. and now this is the way for me.'

And I'll tell you something else that I'd strongly recommend - have a soul mate.

I mean, a real soul mate. She has to be a reflection of your very being! My wife, Hafidzah... Only God knows how much I love her. She has been a huge tower of strength for me. She is a reflection of my very being. This is one of the biggest reasons for my current condition.

Then, there's nothing like getting up at nights and praying to The Al Mighty. One of my prayers is Ishtikorah. This is a prayer asking God to give me conviction. To give me strength in making decisions. This is where I would say I had gained self assurance, 'yakin' as we Malays say it, without sounding arrogant or boastful. This inner confidence is so important to cancer patients, as one will be going through so many decision making cross-roads, some that may eventually lead to whether you live or whether you die.

I'd read a New Sunday Times (click here for full story) article about my battling cancer that was publish in the Focus Section this morning. It feels so good to be able to 'give' and share - in a wide sense - the experience that I had gone through, to the masses of people out there who may learn and gain some insight on how to manage cancer - their own, their loved ones or their friends.

And I must acknowledge the good work done by Hafidzah in getting the article published. Only Allah knows the rewards that are due for her in the hereafter, insyaAllah.

Thank you, sayang.


Nazlan.

Nothing else matters...

I've read many a time that true wealth is contentment.

I don't know if it's got to do with age, or my contracting cancer nearly 5 years ago or a combination of both, but I must admit that for me, true wealth really is contentment. It's kinda funny to realise this only upon going through a life threatening experience. Sometimes, I suppose, one has to get a good knock on the head to know that what we have in front of our own nose is already good enough for us.

But the nature of man is such that it's never quite enough isn't it? When is it quite enough then? What does it really take for us to say to ourselves 'that's it for me...thank you, I'm done!'?

Laying on what crossed my mind as my death bed immediately after my first major operation back in December 2003, it hit me that when all is said and done - all I really needed was good health. Nothing else really mattered at the time...

This was a strange phase that I went through.

In a way, I cherished the idea that nothing else mattered because there and then, I suddenly felt contented. I mean, there I was, laying on my hospital bed - given 35% chance to live the next 5 years, and for the first time in many years, I felt contented. I actually felt good. Simply because all I wanted was good health, and nothing else mattered - absolutely.

I must say that I'd grown up since then.

I now wake up easily almost every morning between 3 to 4am to recite my night prayers to God. I now love my family more than ever before. I am closer to my daughters and understand them more than I ever did when they were growing up. I'm appreciative and thankful for my wife's relentless effort to make our lives better and better. I am more thankful than I've ever been in my life.

God is indeed great.


Nazlan.

Salam Aidil Fitri

Maaf zahir dan batin.

I wonder how many of us really know the meaning of this oft repeated sentence... 'maaf zahir dan batin'. It's literal translation is to 'forgive... in body and spirit'.

I also often wonder why it is so difficult for us to forgive - truly forgive. Aren't we taught that God creates us 'in the light of His soul', or that we have many similarities to His great attributes. After all, He is the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. If we had been given even a spark of His attributes, then surely it should be easy for us to forgive.

Sometimes, depending on the gravity of the 'offence' we perceive to have received from the person who has hurt us, we may forgive - in body. That is to show outwardly that we have accepted an apology. But then, one can 'feel' that we have not really forgiven 'in spirit' because we have allowed ourselves to contemplate the apology within our ego.

We feel that we were right in our argument. We are convinced that our point of view is supreme, that we have been misunderstood. What we may have done, more often than not, is that we may have even overlooked that we have failed to communicate.

If God AlMighty can forgive the worst sinner of His servant, just who are we to think that we cannot forgive anybody, zahir dan batin? Dare we even think that we are above God Himself? Indeed, to me that has to be the height of stupidity.

Since my contracting cancer, I would like to think that I have been able to forgive much much more easily than I ever did. Oh yes, I used to have an ego so big [and so stupid, I might add] that I thought I can never forgive some of my so-called enemies.

Not anymore.

But I confess, that I must continue to learn to keep quiet when the situation warrants me to keep quiet. Not to spontaneously react, even when the temptation to do so is so overwhelmingly strong. Easier said than done - most times. I am sure, this will further help improve my health - body AND soul.

Selamat Hari Raya,

Maaf, zahir dan batin.

Do think carefully what it really means when you say it, or when someone says it to you the next time round.

Nazlan.

Body, Mind, Spirit

I had contracted colon cancer late 2003.

The doctor sliced 600mm of my colon and fixed a colostomy bag on me, and then sent me for the conventional medical treatment of chemotherapy for 3 painful months. I then began to feel stupid - simply because I wasn't getting any better - I started feeling worse actually. Health wise, I felt I was literally going backwards! To top it all I was paying for all this so-called treatment to some BMW-driving doctor and getting sicker by the day!

It was then that I realised that I had to take my life into my own hands and moved on to seek an alternative road to recovery.

I began talking to many cancer patients. I began reading. I read and read and read so many books, articles, journals, and spent many hours on the web trying to understand cancer, and seek a proper cure for the disease. During this time of my search, I had only one thought in my head that seemed to stick like a very powerful glue - that in every disease, God gives a cure. The adage that cancer has no cure is one BIG lie to me.

This is when I made a huge turnabout belief in conventional medicine. Up until then, when it comes to taking medicine and listening to the good doctors' advise, I had full faith in them - 100%, no question.

Not anymore.

My oncologist told me I had 35% chance to live the next 5 years. That was in 2003. It is now 2008, and I have not felt any better in my life today!

The medical profession has a lot to learn about treating the sick. They claim to 'cure' their patients by treating their physical ailments. Then they tell us we have 6 months to live... This is the type of doctors we have curing our sick.

They give you medicine to cure your body, then they kill your mind to death!

I don't have the statistics [and I don't care too much for them actually], but I believe cancer patients literally WILL themselves to die when they hear their doctors telling them they don't have a chance to live.

This is why I regard the power of the mind and the calmness of the spirit as EQUALLY important to the health of the body.

In other words, the cure for cancer ought to be WHOLISTIC. All three components that make up the total content of us humans - BODY, MIND, SPIRIT, must be taken care of and cured simultaneously, concurrently. One simply cannot treat one aspect and ignore the other. This is why so many go for chemo [read conventional medicine] and die!

I make no apologies for my seeming disgust at modern, conventional medicine. I have nothing against doctors. Many of my good friends are doctors. My own daughter, Yana, is reading medicine at The Czech Republic. It's just that I believe the medical system stinks when it comes to treatment of cancer.

It doesn't matter what cancer we are looking at. The important thing is that we take responsibility for our own health. The health system as we know it does not have all the answers, unfortunately.

But the good news is that total cure is out there, and it CAN be attained. One just have to have the will to find it.

Nazlan.

Don't be sad...

I'd visited my uncle; Datuk Sheikh Mustapha Syed Shukor, a dear family friend, at HUKM, a government hospital 3 weeks ago to see how he was doing after a major operation - having his colon tumor removed, the same surgery I had done on me more than 4 years ago.

He looked quite down physically, but man, was he spirited. He must be one of the most optimistic guy I've ever known. He would be - after all he took up the Silva Mind Control method back in the 70s and he had trained under Jose Silva himself! Uncle Sheikh is to me, a living guru of a positive thinker. After all, it was his son that was to become the first Malaysian astronaut. I don't care what people think or say about uncle, but I am absolutely convinced that it was his positive energy that was responsible for influencing his son to become the first Malaysian astronaut.

But as much as a positive thinker that he is, I had caught uncle in a contemplative mood when he must have reflected the extreme emotional swing he had experienced early this year when after celebrating his astronaut son come home so successfully from space, his younger son died suddenly upon his return from Russia.

I had always seen cancer as a diesease of not only the physical state of our being but very much linked with the emotional and spiritual state as well.

I then gave uncle a copy of one of the many books I had read that was to change my life, entitled 'Don't Be Sad' by Aidah ibn Abdullah al-Qarni. The book is a compilation of appropriate verses and narrations from the Quran and the Prophet's Sunnah. It basically teaches us to live - and really live for the present, the moment, and not to dwell in the past nor the future. It teaches us to appreciate the now that we have, and be thankful for today that we are alive and doing well as compared to the millions suffering around us in this finite world of ours.

I hope and pray that uncle will be able to pull it off by putting the past beyond him. He shouldn't even think too much about the future. I told him to just appreciate the fact that he's alive and doing well, and that he's going to continue doing well.

He told me he's looking forward to seeing me at the gym again... That's the spirit to carry, uncle !! You'll be back in no time. All you have to do is to just believe and be convinced that you will, and you'll see what will happen.

Nazlan.

Blood Pressure Drug Norvasc Cause Bad Breath

Bad Breath Caused By Norvasc And Other Medications

There are many disorders of the human body which thankfully are treatable with medications. So many medications are now available that can help a person live much longer healthy and productive lives. But many of these medications come with side effects that have to be addressed. One of the very common side effects of several medications is bad breath. Medications such as Norvasc can cause bad breath.

Researched by Hafidzah@1AlternativeMedicineS.com

Click here to read more...

Methamphetamine Cause Bad Breath

There is a new drug in town and it is very dangerous for teens and anyone else who gets involved with it. It is called methamphetamines, and it is very addictive and very dangerous not only to take, but to make as well.

Signs Your Child May Be Taking Methamphetamines

One of the most common signs can be that methamphetamine cause bad breath.

Researched by Hafidzah@1AlternativeMedicineS.com

Click here to read more....